Cable blocking and splice protection have conventionally been performed using liquids such a curable resins which are injected into the cables for cable blocking or are forced into the end of the cable under pressure for splice protection. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,939,882 to Gillemot and 4,466,843 to Shimirak are exemplary of such methods, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
In a particular area of cable splicing, special problems are encountered when splicing a cable containing paper insulation to a cable which contains oil or petroleum based materials, i.e., cables that are generally referred to as "filled" cables and are filled with a grease, petroleum jelly or plasticized urethane type materials. The specific problem encountered in connecting cables of these two different types is due to the oil or petroleum based material migrating from the filled cable into the splice area and contacting or being absorbed in the paper insulation. When this occurs, the mechanical and insulation properties of the paper is reduced or eliminated resulting in failures of the splice. The conventional solution to this problem is to connect the dissimilar cables using a splice stub which contains a complete cable block whereby one end of the stub is spliced to the cable containing the paper insulation and the other end of the stub is spliced to the cable containing the oil or petroleum based materials. The use of the stub prevents the oil or petroleum based materials from migrating into the area containing the paper insulation. The use of such a splice stub is inefficient in that it requires a factory made stub containing the required block and matching the cables to be spliced and requires two splices to be made and protected where it would be desirable to only form and protect one splice.